Russia's Nouveaux Riches -- Including Boris Yeltsin
MOSCOW: Boris Yeltsin's income jumped sevenfold, from less than $45,000
to $325,000, last year. The presidential windfall became public after
Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the state paper of record, published a list of
officials' earnings. This has been an annual event (as have citizens' disbelieving
snickers) since last spring, when, during a seasonal campaign against
corruption, Yeltsin decreed that all government officials should declare their
incomes and holdings. Intended to increase transparency at the highest levels
of power and build public trust, the decree had the opposite effect. Nearly all
the declared incomes were absurd. The oil-and-media tycoon Boris
Berezovsky, then deputy secretary of the Security Council, put his net worth
at $38,500. And just how transparent is Yeltsin being? Last year he
explained that his income was modest (largely derived from royalties on his
memoirs), but not to worry, the state covers most of his expenses. This time
around, he's silent. The Kremlin confirmed the figures, but gave no reason for
the income jump. "Why should this figure upset so many journalists?"
wondered a Kremlin spokesman. "Our president is by no means
outrageously wealthy, and he has earned every kopeck honestly."